Latest news with #rightwing
Gizmodo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Gizmodo
Elon Says He's Working to ‘Fix' Grok After AI Disagrees With Him on Right-Wing Violence
Musk thinks his AI is corrupted by the "legacy media." Billionaire conspiracy theorist Elon Musk really doesn't like it when Grok says anything that contradicts his far-right worldview. And that's exactly what his AI chatbot did late Tuesday when an X user asked whether people on the political right or the political left have been more violent since President Donald Trump was first elected in 2016. Grok said it was people on the right. Musk responded that he was working to fix Grok so it wouldn't do that again. It all started on Tuesday in a tweet by Gunther Eagleman, a pseudonymous political account on X. 'JUST ANNOUNCED: Support for the violent Democrat Party has collapsed,' Eagleman tweeted. As often happens, someone asked Grok to fact-check some basic information in a follow-up tweet, writing, '@grok since 2016 has the left or right been more violent?' Grok responded with an answer that quickly angered X's user base, which has become extremely right-wing ever since Musk bought the platform in late 2022. 'Since 2016, data suggests right-wing political violence has been more frequent and deadly, with incidents like the January 6 Capitol riot and mass shootings (e.g., El Paso 2019) causing significant fatalities,' Grok wrote. Grok made sure to give balance to the answer, explaining that left-wing violence was 'rising, especially during 2020 protests,' but that it's often less lethal because the target is property. 'Surveys show both sides increasingly justify violence, reflecting deep polarization,' Grok continued. 'Right-wing attacks account for most deadly incidents, per reports like Reuters and GAO. However, biases in reporting may skew perceptions. Both sides contribute to a growing cycle of unrest, and precise attribution remains contentious due to varying definitions of violence.' That was not the right response for Musk. 'Major fail, as this is objectively false. Grok is parroting legacy media. Working on it,' the billionaire oligarch wrote. Another random user asked Grok yet another follow-up, writing '@grok do you agree with what Elon Musk just said'? But Grok again didn't provide an answer that Musk would like. 'I don't fully agree with Elon Musk's claim that my analysis was 'objectively false or 'parroting legacy media,'' the AI wrote. 'Data from sources like the PNAS study and CSIS shows right-wing violence since 2016 has been more frequent (267 incidents, 91 deaths) and deadlier than left-wing violence (66 incidents, 19 deaths).' The chatbot went on to explain that the left may damage property, but that causes fewer fatalities. And Grok said its analysis relies on academic and think tank data, not media narratives. 'Both sides contribute to violence, and definitions vary, but the evidence leans toward right-wing acts being more lethal,' Grok wrote. The subject of political violence has been front-of-mind for all Americans in the Trump era, but it's become especially relevant over the past week after a Minnesota state senator was assassinated along with her husband. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were killed, and another state legislator, John Hoffman and his wife, were both severely wounded in the early morning hours of Saturday, June 14. Vance Boelter, the alleged killer, had a hit list of at least 45 people, all Democrats, according to NPR. But before the shooter's identity was known, conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and Elon Musk were cooking up their own version of events. 'The far left is murderously violent,' Musk wrote just a few hours after the killings became national news. Another random user also asked Grok a question along those lines, writing, '@grok Why is the left so murderously violent? They don't seem so tolerant.' Grok again answered in a way that would upset the site's right-wing users, writing, 'The claim that 'the left' is murderously violent isn't backed by evidence.' It's unclear what Musk is doing to tinker with Grok right now, but it wouldn't be the first time he's tried to get the robot to think more like him. Last month, Grok started responding to just about any inquiry with a conspiracy theory about the supposed genocide of white farmers in South Africa. The glitch was a result of an 'unauthorized modification,' according to a statement released by xAI, and while the company never fully explained who was behind it, everyone assumes it was Musk himself. Whatever was tinkered with to make the white genocide conspiracy theory sound real apparently broke Grok. Musk, who infamously made two Nazi-style salutes the day Trump was inaugurated for his second term, recently retreated from his role in the Trump administration as the head of DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. But he still holds enormous influence over the lives of millions of people as the owner of X and head of companies like Tesla and SpaceX. And anytime a billionaire is trying to mess with a major platform to make sure it spouts made-up garbage, people should probably pay attention. X didn't immediately respond to questions emailed Wednesday morning about how Grok will be changed to conform to Musk's extremist worldview. Gizmodo will update this post if we hear back.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Paul Marshall: Britain's anti-woke media baron
Unlike Rupert Murdoch, he is barely known, but the UK has a new right-wing media mogul: Paul Marshall who has quietly built a powerful empire that reaches millions of Britons. The 65-year-old added to his impressive stable last autumn when he purchased The Spectator magazine, viewed as the bible of Britain's Conservative Party, for £100 million ($135 million). He already co-owned brash current affairs television channel GB News, a sort of British Fox News, and is the owner of respected centre-right-leaning news and opinion website UnHerd. Marshall -- who himself has been on a journey from supporting centrist politics to more right-wing causes in recent years -- got into media after making a fortune in finance. He is worth more than £850 million ($1.1 billion), according to this year's edition of the Sunday Times rich list. During a recent lecture at Oxford University, Marshall said he became a press baron "in an almost unplanned way". "I was a frustrated consumer," he said, denouncing what he called a "biased mainstream media" where "truth was sacrificed and trust was lost". During his media journey, he says he has "discovered a set of illiberal practices and a dominating mindset which I believe need to be challenged." - 'Generating influence' - Born in Ealing, London, in August 1959, the public-school-educated Marshall studied history at Oxford before enrolling at the prestigious French business school INSEAD. He made his wealth as a successful hedge fund manager, co-founding Marshall Wace. Along the way, he was a donor and member of the Liberal Democrats, a pro-European, social democratic party that usually finishes third in UK general elections. But Marshall left the Lib Dems in 2015 and donated to the Leave campaign in the referendum on European Union membership the following year. He told the Financial Times in 2017: "Most people in Britain do not want to become part of a very large country called Europe. They want to be part of a country called Britain." "He's different from Murdoch, who used his media empire to make money," Matt Walsh, head of the journalism school at Cardiff University, told AFP. "Marshall was rich before acquiring his media," Walsh added, noting his outlets are currently loss-making. "It's about generating influence, presenting his view of the world." Marshall "was a right-wing Lib Dem but gradually shifted further to the right", he said. Marshall donated once to the Conservative Party and founded UnHerd in July 2017, a website "for people who dare to think for themselves". In 2021, the financier shook up Britain's TV news ecosystem when he helped found GB News, the country's first new news channel since Murdoch's Sky News launched in 1989. The channel, whose logo adopts the colours of the British flag, is proudly anti-woke, and its presenters regularly rail against immigration and net zero climate policies. GB News has on several occasions fallen foul of Britain's broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, which says its use of politicians as interviewers breaches impartiality rules. But the provocative channel is growing in popularity. TV rating agency Barb found that in November 2024 GB News overtook Sky News for monthly live viewings for the first time. - 'Under-represented views' - According to Barb, GB News enjoyed an average of more than 3.1 million monthly viewings in the year to April. Its accounts published in February show that despite doubling turnover to more than £15.7 million, GB News made a pre-tax loss of £33.4 million for the year ending May 31, 2024. "He is keen about the promotion of what he sees as underrepresented ideas and viewpoints," a source close to Marshall told AFP. The mogul largely shuns publicity, as his communications team reminded AFP, declining a request for an interview. Marshall is a committed Christian who was knighted in 2016 for services to education and philanthropy. He launched ARK School in 2002, which has helped nearly 30,000 students from modest backgrounds. Marshall has also donated more than £80 million to the London School of Economics. His wife is French and their son Winston played the banjo in Mumford & Sons before leaving the folk-rock band after reportedly falling out with bandmates over his conservative views. In 2022, Marshall co-founded the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, an international conference of conservative lawmakers and right-wing influencers. To the Hope Not Hate organisation, Marshall is far right. Last year, it uncovered an anonymous account on X in which he had liked tweets calling for the mass deportation of immigrants. A spokesman for Marshall said then the tweets did not "represent his opinions". adm/pdh/jkb/rl/lb
Daily Mail
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Abbie Chatfield tearfully announces break from social media after a 'horrible year' of trolling: 'I need time off, desperately'
Abbie Chatfield has revealed that she is taking a break from social media after what she says has been a 'horrible year.' The influencer, 29, shared an expansive and emotional video to TikTok in which she outlined the reasoning behind her decision. She said that 'endless trolling' from 'right-wing freaks' had finally reached breaking point and that she needs time away from social media to 'protect her brain.' Over the next four weeks, Abbie's social media feeds will only feature pre-recorded clips for her It's A Lot Podcast. 'For the next month, I'm not going to be posting on social media at all except for pre-scheduled content for the podcast,' she revealed. 'I really need time off from the internet - like desperately.' From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. Giving followers an insight into the level of trolling, Abbie said that the amount of abuse she receives online was 'endless'. 'It's been really horrific this past six months with the amount of violent trolling that I have received,' she said. 'It's hundreds of messages a day. It's really traumatising and I don't like saying that because I know that trolls want to hurt me. 'Ever since the end of last year the trolling has become increasingly violent and aggressive from people that don't like me. It's day, every day.' Abbie continued: 'Just imagine if every single day you received a hundred texts saying that people were going to SA [sexually assault] you, people want to be violent towards you, people hate you. 'I cant even enjoy TikTok because my for you page is videos about me - people making fun of me.' She also claimed that the vitriol had gotten so bad over the past year that she has even experienced suicidal ideation. 'I haven't really gone a day in the past eight months without having thoughts of un-aliving myself so, I really need a break because, when I get to have a day off without my phone, I'm able to get back to being normal,' Abbie tearfully admitted. 'I'm sick of being lied about, I'm sick of being attacked by right wing freaks and losers.' Abbie also revealed that she was currently in the process of writing a book - a process made almost impossible when coupled with the emotional drain of dealing with internet trolls. 'I've decided to put in like a boundary for myself to protect my brain because it's been extraordinarily difficult this year and it's incredibly exhausting,' she said. 'I'm also writing a book right now and, in order to write the book I need to be mentally clear because the constant criticism I receive makes me paralysed to write or actually do anything because I believe I am what everyone says I am.' Abbie's emotional admission comes after her online rival Clementine Ford defended Abbie amid their ongoing internet stoush. The pair have been exchanging barbs for weeks after Clementine accused Abbie of profiting from the 'performance of being politically engaged'. However, the pair have appeared to have found some common ground, with Clementine defending Abbie in an explosive response to an online troll. She shared an image to her Instagram story on Thursday that showed a very off-colour remark by a troll account called 'Right Of Centre'. The comment read: 'Two ugly xx trolls. Men should not help them at all. 'If they're being mugged they're not worth it - too ugly - only good looking nice women deserve chivalry on any level.' Clementine responded swiftly, slamming the commenter as an 'incel creep'. 'Regardless of my views on AC [Abbie Chatfield], I'm pretty sure neither of us need or have ever needed nor have ever asked for men to help us - especially not weird little incel creeps who blame women for their basement position on the male hierarchy,' she said. 'F*** off, loser. We both know you would p*** your pants in fear if one of us even looked in your direction.' Abbie and Clementine's feud began when the latter wrote on her 'Dear Clementine' blog on Substack that some influencers, like Abbie, profit from the 'performance of being politically engaged' while criticising anyone who disagrees with them. If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, help is available. Mental health helplines offer 24/7 support, including crisis counseling, suicide prevention, and general mental health support.
New York Times
13-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Progressives Need a Global Movement
It's a strange irony that in recent years the nationalist right has gotten much better at international organizing than the ostensibly cosmopolitan left. The Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, went global during Donald Trump's first term; it's held gatherings in Israel, South Korea, Hungary and Argentina, among other countries. American conservatives have a growing pantheon of international leaders they take inspiration from, including Hungary's Viktor Orban, El Salvador's Nayib Bukele and Argentina's Javier Milei. This right-wing internationale trades ideas and memes. Its members support one another across borders. A steady stream of American conservative operatives, including the influential strategist Chris Rufo, has passed through Hungary's government-aligned Danube Institute, learning from the country's successful record of using the state to crush liberal institutions. Earlier this year members of the MAGA movement from Alex Jones all the way up to Vice President JD Vance rallied around an ultranationalist Romanian presidential candidate who'd been disqualified due to charges of Russian interference. This week, the nationalist group Patriots for Europe Foundation held a conference at the European Parliament with members of India's right-wing government, aimed at building an alliance based on 'civilizational sovereignty' — as opposed to universal human rights — and the fight against Islamism. There is nothing comparable to this global network among progressives, which is one sign of the left's deep crisis. Partly, progressives' problem is one of inertia. For decades now, when people on the left have coordinated across borders, they've often done it through liberal institutions: international bodies like the United Nations, international NGOs, academic conferences. These institutions tend to favor styles of communication that are highly specialized and bureaucratic. (To be part of the U.N.'s orbit, for example, grass-roots feminist groups often must learn its jargon: 'gender mainstreaming,' 'S.H.R.H.,' 'duty-bearers.') 'The progressive forces, the left and socialist forces, lost the way of communication with the people,' Alexis Tsipras, a leftist former prime minister of Greece, told me. They became, he said, 'more systemic.' And now the systems that sustained the left — particularly academia and nonprofits — are under concerted attack. 'The left basically depended on a fantasy view of the stability of institutions,' said Subir Sinha, a scholar at the University of London who has studied the links between far-right movements in India and Europe. Progressives, he said, neither anticipated nor planned for how they might answer a central question of our time: 'How would you do politics when the ground has shifted so dramatically from under your feet?' Some of that planning has now begun, however belatedly. This week, Tsipras convened a conference in Athens of progressives from Europe, Turkey, Latin America and the United States to discuss the global crisis of liberal democracy. It was the second such gathering he's organized, and the first since Trump was re-elected. Among the speakers was Senator Bernie Sanders, joining remotely. 'Right-wing extremists all over the world have been organizing effectively, and I think that it's time that we built an international progressive socialist movement, and this is a step forward,' he said. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Steven Pinker's Damning Defense of Harvard
Talk may be cheap, and actions may speak louder than words. Nevertheless, rhetoric matters. It arouses passions, noble and base. It frames issues, clarifies stakes, defines missions, and directs activity to its proper ends; it also obscures consequences, sows confusion, and leads astray. A statesmans rhetoric unites free and democratic citizens by connecting short-term exigencies to the nations enduring principles. A demagogues rhetoric undercuts a constitutional republics long-term interests by fomenting grievances and legitimating the thirst for retribution. In late May in "Harvard Derangement Syndrome," a 4000-word New York Times essay criticizing the universitys right-wing critics, Steven Pinker argues "that the invective now being aimed at Harvard has become unhinged." The prolific Harvard psychology professor and bestselling author admirably acknowledges that Harvard is alarmingly flawed, but he insists that his university deserves to be preserved and improved rather than destroyed. Still, his defense of Harvard is damning. Pinker furnishes a sampling of the scorn that the right has been heaping on his university. Recently, mostly right-wing critics have denounced Harvard as "a 'national disgrace, a 'woke madrasa, a 'Maoist indoctrination camp, a 'ship of fools, a 'bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment, a 'cesspool of extremist riots" and an 'Islamist outpost in which the 'dominant view on campus is 'destroy the Jews, and youve destroyed the root of Western civilization." Not to be outdone, President Trump has opined that Harvard is, writes Pinker, "'an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution, a 'Liberal mess and a 'threat to Democracy, which has been 'hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and "birdbrains" who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called future leaders." Harsh rhetoric, indeed. What is the reality? Rare among his colleagues, Pinker has an honorable decade-long record of criticizing and seeking to correct Harvard from within. He has called on the university to admit students based on merit, protect free speech, rein in DEI, and, a year after Hamas Oct. 7 massacres in southern Israel, "teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity." In 2023 - late in the day it must be noted - he co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. These are earnest and commendable efforts. But Pinker underestimates the cumulative damage Harvard has inflicted on itself over many years by sidelining merit, censoring speech, admitting students unprepared to grapple with moral and historical complexity, and hiring and retaining faculty and administrators indifferent or ill-disposed to academic freedom. To counter the right-wing critics who want to crush Harvard, Pinker invokes characteristically conservative concerns. He espouses incremental reform and appreciation of the services - such as scientific research - rendered by Harvard. He warns against the common tendency to view institutions, like people, as either all good or all bad rather than as a mix of strengths and weaknesses. He urges "proportionality" in dealing with Harvards "serious ailments." And he advises that "[t]he appropriate treatment (as with other imperfect institutions) is to diagnose which parts need which remedies, not to cut its carotid and watch it bleed out." These are sound prescriptions. Still, Pinker might have come closer to grasping the roots of right-wing ire by recognizing that Harvard would have avoided transforming itself into a haven for illiberalism if university administrators and faculty had exercised the moderation that he calls upon the universitys right-wing critics to practice. Instead, Pinker maintains that a significant portion of right-wing ire is misplaced. Harvard has become a "tempting target" for the right, he thinks, because among its 25,000 students and 2,400 faculty "eccentrics and troublemakers" are inevitable "and today their antics can go viral." Well-meaning inquirers, moreover, will sometimes get carried away in debate over weighty and consequential issues. And "global networks" shape Harvard faculty and graduate students more than does Harvard while "peer cultures" influence students more than "indoctrination by professors." These routine considerations and commonplace effects would explain occasional lapses on Harvards part from its educational mission. They do not begin to capture the magnitude and perdurance of the pathologies that plague Harvard and higher education more generally. Since the 1951 publication of William F. Buckleys "God and Man at Yale," mostly conservatives have diagnosed those pathologies. Allan Blooms "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987), Roger Kimballs "Tenured Radicals" (1990), and Allan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglates "The Shadow University" (1998) remain timely. Pinker acknowledges that "some of the enmity against Harvard has been earned." Yet contrary to his assurances, his examples suggest that the problem stems not from "eccentrics and troublemakers" and occasional departures from decorum by otherwise upstanding members of the academic community, but rather from a dominant intellectual culture that subordinates free inquiry to the enforcement of progressive dogma: In 2021 the biologist Carole Hoovenwas demonized and ostracized, effectively driving her out of Harvard, for explaining in an interview how biology defines male and female. Her cancellation was the last straw that led us to create the academic freedom council, but it was neither the first nor the last. The epidemiologist Tyler VanderWeelewas forced to grovel in "restorative justice" sessions when someone discovered that he had co-signed an amicus brief in the 2015 Supreme Court case arguing against same-sex marriage. A class by the bioengineerKit Parkeron evaluating crime prevention programs was quashed after students found it disturbing." The legal scholarRonald Sullivan was dismissed as faculty dean of a residential house when his legal representation of Harvey Weinstein made students feel "unsafe." These gross violations of academic freedom, Pinker suggests, are the exception. But the counterexamples that he offers to demonstrate that the rule at Havard is to tolerate a diversity of opinions reinforce the conviction that the university has lost its way. Across more than two decades at Harvard, Pinker states, he has "taught many controversial ideas including the reality of sex differences, the heritability of intelligence and the evolutionary roots of violence." He fails to note that the typical objections on campus to these ideas are rooted not in empirical evidence but rather in moral and political outrage. His assertion that most of his colleagues also "follow the data and report what their findings indicate or show, however politically incorrect" also has the opposite effect of that which he intends. Thats because "politically incorrect" research findings at Harvard turn out to consist in confirming the fairly obvious and mostly mundane: Race has some biological reality. Marriage reduces crime. So does hot-spot policing. Racismhas been in decline. Phonics is essential to reading instruction. Trigger warnings can do more harm than good. Africans were active in the slave trade. Educational attainment is partly in the genes. Cracking down on drugs has benefits, and legalizing them has harms. Markets can make people fairer and more generous. Pinker, though, contends that the conduct of such research shows that "[f]or all the headlines, day-to-day life at Harvard consists of publishing ideas without fear or favor." It doesnt. That an enlightened liberal of Pinkers stature believes that Harvard scholarship involving for the most part the confirmation of readily observable phenomena warrants praise for standing against the crowd dramatizes just how far gone is the universitys intellectual life. Determined to see Harvard as open and pluralistic, Pinker asserts that the faculty contains "dozens of prominent conservatives, like the legal scholar Adrian Vermeule and the economist Greg Mankiw." If, however, there were, say, five dozen conservative faculty members on campus, that would amount to less than 3% of the universitys 2,400 faculty members, and it would underscore that Harvard is a one-party operation. Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, suggests the situation is much worse than Pinker realizes. "I have been at the university for 21 years," he told me, "and have no idea who the dozens of prominent conservatives are." Goldsmiths HLS colleague, Professor Vermeule, one of Pinkers two examples of conservatives on campus, went further in a reply to Pinker on "X": "With all due respect, out of these two (2) examples of 'conservative faculty, one supported Harris in 2024. The other doesnt call himself a 'conservative, because he thinks there is little left to conserve." In an email exchange, Vermeule - the one who doesnt call himself a conservative - elaborated: "Now that Harvey Mansfield has retired, its extremely difficult to name any 'prominent conservatives at Harvard, let alone 'dozens. Although I suppose there may be a few natural scientists flying under the radar." Pinker briefly defends Harvards undergraduate curriculum. He reports that the universitys introduction to economics remains very popular and is routinely taught by conservatives or neoliberals, most courses are mainstream, and typical woke classes are small boutique offerings. He overlooks, however, the progressive orthodoxy that permeates the mainstream classes. And he disregards Harvards impoverishment of its undergraduate curriculum - similar to other elite universities - in areas that constitute liberal educations core: American political ideas and institutions; constitutional, diplomatic, economic, religious, and military history; the great books of Western civilization; and serious study - rooted in knowledge of language, culture, and history - of other peoples and nations. While Pinker is correct that the right would do well to rein in its invective, his Harvard-is-not-as-bad-as-it-seems rhetoric could use some fine tuning as well. His lengthy New York Times assessment corroborates the suspicion that for those concerned about the plight of liberal education, Harvard is at least as bad as it seems. Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at and he can be followed on X @BerkowitzPeter.
